Our smartphones, operating systems and apps are dominated by Google & Apple. “[…] these two Silicon Valley profit-driven companies decide which apps are or aren’t allowed, and moderate what our mobile software looks like.” says @danlammerhirt from @waag working on the Mobifree project (together with a.o. @efoundation @fdroid @NGIZero @murena @microg @delta
https://waag.org/en/article/why-smartphones-are-key-better-internet/
Yes and no.
It’s clear that no one here actually understands how this stuff works so I’m done. But I will say this. Google only controls so much. Another large player or enough smaller developers working together could change the direction. And no, you don’t really need play services, play store, etc. There are alts like f-Droid and see my earlier sentence.
Lineage OS is great and all but at the end of the day most phones have google malware